Urbin Report

Monday, March 31, 2008

Maggie Williams was HRC's Chief of Staff back in BJ Clinton's presidency. She is the one who took a box of files out of Vince Foster's office the night he died. That she did is clearly marked in the log of the uniformed Secret Service agent who was place to watch the office after the report of Foster's death. Then she flat out lied about doing it under oath. A typical HRC staffer.

Hillary Clinton spends considerable time on the campaign trail bemoaning unscrupulous lenders who have left millions of Americans scrambling to keep their homes but all the while her campaign manager, Margaret “Maggie” Williams, has sat on the board of one of the nation’s once-largest and now-bankrupt sub-prime mortgage lenders.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

...and it appears she is. OK, not a hard call given her history of destroying anyone who got in her way, sense of entitlement, and raw naked lust for power. I apologize for using the words "naked" and "lust" in a sentence about HRC.

In her most definitive comments to date on the subject, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton sought Saturday to put to rest any notion that she will drop out of the presidential race, pledging in an interview to not only compete in all the remaining primaries but also continue until there is a resolution of the disqualified results in Florida and Michigan...."I know there are some people who want to shut this down and I think they are wrong," Clinton said in an interview during a campaign stop here Saturday. "I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan. And if we don't resolve it, we'll resolve it at the convention -- that's what credentials committees are for.

If Hillary Rodham Clinton is feeling heat from pundits and party elders to quit the race and back Barack Obama, you'd never know it from her crowds, energy level and upbeat demeanor on the campaign trail.

"There are millions of reasons to continue this race: people in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina, and all of the contests yet to come," Clinton told reporters Friday. "This is a very close race and clearly I believe strongly that everyone should have their voices heard and their votes counted."

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Asked at a New Hampshire campaign stop about possibly staying in Iraq 50 years, John McCain interrupted — “Make it a hundred” — then offered a precise analogy to what he envisioned: “We’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so.” Lest anyone think he was talking about prolonged war-fighting rather than maintaining a presence in postwar Iraq, he explained: “That would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.”

And lest anyone persist in thinking he was talking about war-fighting, he told his questioner: “It’s fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a very volatile part of the world.”

There is another analogy to the kind of benign and strategically advantageous “presence” McCain was suggesting for postwar Iraq: Kuwait. The U.S. (with allies) occupied Kuwait in 1991 and has remained there with a major military presence for 17 years. We debate dozens of foreign policy issues in this country. I’ve yet to hear any serious person of either party call for a pullout from Kuwait.

Why? Because our presence projects power and provides stability for the entire Gulf and for vulnerable U.S. allies that line its shores.

The desirability of a similar presence in Iraq was obvious as long as five years ago to retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, one of Barack Obama’s leading military advisers and his campaign co-chairman. During the first week of the Iraq War, McPeak (a war critic) suggested in an interview that “we’ll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right.” (Meaning, if we win.)...But a serious argument is not what Democrats are seeking. They want the killer sound bite, the silver bullet to take down McCain. According to the Politico, they have found it: “Dems to hammer McCain for ‘100 years.’ ...As Lenin is said to have said: “A lie told often enough becomes truth.” And as this lie passes into truth, the Democrats are ready to deploy it “as the linchpin of an effort to turn McCain’s national security credentials against him,” reports David Paul Kuhn of the Politico.

Hence: A Howard Dean fundraising letter charging McCain with seeking “an endless war in Iraq.” And a Democratic National Committee press release in which Dean asserts: “McCain’s strategy is a war without end. . . . Elect John McCain and get 100 years in Iraq.”

The truth doesn't matter to democrats. This "big lie" is the same "Politics of Personal Destruction" that they are infamous for.

Friday, March 28, 2008

As I have, and many others, have said, HRC isn't giving up as long as there is a slim, sliver of a chance of her getting access to the Oval Office. She's been planning her Socialist Police State for a long time, and isn't going to let some former State Senator from a flyover state stop her. Some democrat pundits have tossed around the "Tanya Harding" option. There is where Hillary effectively "kneecaps" Obama in order to take him out of the race (although, Obama's spiritual adviser seems to being that for her). If that tears the party in half, she's OK with that. Because in her view, she's more important than the party.

Peggy Noonan sums it up well:

“What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day.”

This must be driving her crazy. She's been planning and plotting her path to the Presidency for decades. She will do whatever it takes to win, the democrat party and voters be damned. Personally, I'm stocking up on popcorn and am planning on enjoying the show.

1) Clinton was dealt a great hand. The economy was entering its eighth quarter of expansion, oil was cheap (around $11 a barrel), inflation was low, there was greater certainty about the global economy because of the end of the Cold War, "and, of course, a tremendous set of new productivity-enhancing technologies involving information technologies and the World Wide Web burst on the scene." Talk about starting on third base.

2) The economy did OK during Clinton's first term. But it wasn't spectacular. From 1993 through 1996, real gross domestic product grew at an average annual rate of 3.2 percent, employment rose by 11.6 million jobs, average hourly wages grew by 0.8 percent, and market capitalization rose by 78 percent in real terms.

3) But then the economy really kicked into gear. In 1997, Congress passed and Clinton signed (despite initial opposition) a modest capital-gains-tax cut, one that would be worth about $30 billion in today's dollars after four years. This was not Reagan 2.0. Yet from 1997 through 2000, a period when the expansion should have shown its age, real GDP growth averaged 4.2 percent a year, 11.5 million more jobs were created, and real wages grew 6.5 percent. Oh, and the stock market doubled.

Much of the so-called "Clinton Economy" can be explained by the second half of this quote by Dennis Miller: "Bill and Hillary possess that rare blend of grade A Machiavellian caginess combined with the luck of a two-time Powerball winner"

Thursday, March 27, 2008

The governor of Puerto Rico and at least 12 others, including members of his campaign finance committee, were indicted in San Juan in the culmination of a three-year investigation into the governor's campaign finances, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office on the island.

Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá is expected to turn himself in Friday to face a variety campaign related crimes: conspiracy to violate election laws, making false statements, wire fraud, program fraud, conspiracy to defraud the IRS and filing a false tax return.

The 27-count indictment began with a long-running grand jury probe into how the governor funded his election to Puerto Rico's resident commissioner, the nonvoting position in Congress he held prior to becoming governor.

According to U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodríguez, the governor and his allies in Puerto Rico and Philadelphia conspired to pay off campaign finance debt with fake invoices and straw contributions. She said the governor and his operatives hatched a scheme to illegally collect up to $7 million in illegal campaign contributions.

The governor, she said, also used campaign funds to pay for family vacations to Miami, Orlando and Costa Rica. He also allegedly sent his children to China using campaign funds and bought $57,000 worth of luxury suits, said FBI agent in charge Luis Fraticelli.

Colombia said it seized at least 66 pounds (30 kg) of uranium from the country's biggest left-wing rebel group on Wednesday, the first time radioactive material has been linked to the four-decade-old guerrilla war.

The uranium was found in a rural area long considered a Marxist guerrilla stronghold just south of the capital Bogota.

It is being examined by government experts, the defense ministry said in a statement, although it did not say where the material came from or what it could be used for.

An expert on Colombia's cocaine-fueled conflict said rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, do not have the facilities needed to make a bomb with uranium.

"This appears to have been part of a black market operation that the guerrillas were trying to use to make money," said Pablo Casas, an analyst at Bogota think-tank Security and Democracy.

"This is new for Colombia and could bring the FARC into the major leagues of black market terrorist transactions," he said.

Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The three anti-war Democrats made the trip in October 2002, while the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq....Prosecutors say that trip was arranged by Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a Michigan charity official, who was charged Wednesday with setting up the junket at the behest of Saddam's regime. Iraqi intelligence officials allegedly paid for the trip through an intermediary and rewarded Al-Hanooti with 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil.

The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California. ...Prosecutors said Al-Hanooti was responsible for monitoring Congress for the Iraqi Intelligence Service. From 1999 to 2002, he allegedly provided Saddam's government with a list of U.S. lawmakers he believed favored lifting economic sanctions against Iraq.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers' Party. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers. Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer and so is his wife Elizabeth. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate.) Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Benson, went to law school. Look at the Democrat Party in Congress: the Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer.

The Republican Party is different. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen. The leaders of the Republican Revolution were not lawyers. Newt Gingrich was a history professor; Tom Delay was an exterminator; and Dick Armey was an economist. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer, not a lawyer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon....The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work. The Democratic Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history like Gingrich....We cannot expect the Lawyers' Party to provide real change, real reform or real hope in America. Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.

Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.

"No evasive maneuver. I tell ya, I will give to to the commander of Air Base Eagle... Not only were there no bullets flying around, there was no bumblebee flying around," Retired Colonel William "Goose" Changose said.

"we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done."

A policy which is not shown by his voting record. The person running with the record of bipartisanship, which Obama is calling for, is John McCain. That is also an easily observable flat out truth.Barak Obama's voting record is one of "divisive politics." His campaign has managed to tear the democrat party in half (not that I'm complaining about that...) and is causing the party Overseers to chug MaloxTM the way the usually chug whiskey.Not that Obama's fracturing the party is bad thing. He has shown that the Iron Fisted Reign of the Clintons of the DNC is over and that the Black vote is is not owned by the DNC party Overseers.

What Obama's campaign is not is what he is trying to tell you it is. He is trying to con you into believing that he is "the kind of president who would be able to unify the country." Sadly, according to the last New York Times/CBS News Poll, 67 percent of all registered voters are buying his bullshit.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

So it looks more and more like the "Global Warming" doomsayers have been the modern equivalent of "Chicken Little." Even so, reducing the levels of pollutants put out by large carbon emitters, like Communist Chinese coal plants, is still a good idea.So is developing alternate fuel sources so the rest of the world can tell the Arab nations (and that Socialist Chavez) that they can bloody well drink their oil.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

It's some damn good advice and I personally think he should take it, just for the political theater alone.

Here is one of my favorite parts that point out the the DNC's complete and utter lack of respect for the concept of actual "democracy":

By the way, it's a good idea for you to keep floating the notion to the punditry that the Florida and Michigan voters aren't "disenfranchised" if their votes are not counted. Keep saying they are simply paying for their arrogant disregard of the rules. (None of them seem to have caught on that the officials who okayed the early primaries knowing that would nullify the votes are super-delegates whose votes will count anyway, even if they fixed it so the ordinary party members in their states will lose their votes. Way to go!)

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them....Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Deflect, deflect, deflect. It's not Rev. Wright's fault for saying horrible, hateful things, nor my fault for having the bad judgment to associate with him for 20 years. Nope, it's the fault of the media for presenting Wright as a hateful caricature, despite the fact that Wright is a hateful caricature.

Goldberg’s book is an anomaly: serious students of political science shouldn’t find anything here they didn’t already know. Alas, I had to say ‘shouldn’t’, because a very great number of people who consider themselves serious students of political science will be shocked and astonished.

The Kos Kiddies are reaping what they have sown. They are all about the lowest form of the politics of personal destruction.

Up to now they have kept it mostly focused on anybody who does not subscribe to their group think.

No longer. As Ace points out, they are attacking each other over the Obama/Clinton divide and it's ugly.

What happens when you have a party that is obsessed with lockstep adherence to party policy and also obsessed with identity politics?

A war over gender and race.

Here is some of the lovely blood letting going on:

Let the Shillarys walk...

Hillary has abandoned the Democratic party, in an even more destructive way than Joe Lieberman did. She does not deserve our support; her shills have earned our scorn and derision.Instead of simply joining forces with the Republitards, she and her campaign have worked to re-define the term "Democrat" as "people who support Hillary Clinton as the only true choice for President in 2008."As her campaign foundered, she blamed the media (and not her own complete lack of a post-Super Tuesday strategy), and clearly indicated her preference for John McCain over Obama if the latter leads the Democratic ticket.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Dan Riehl notes, via Amanda Carpenter, that in the list of earmarks he requested, $1 Million was requested for the construction of a new hospital pavilion at the University Of Chicago. The request was put in in 2006.

You know who works for the University of Chicago Hospital?

Michelle Obama. She's vice president of community affairs.

As Byron noted, "In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obama’s compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office."

Thursday, March 13, 2008

"I'm not distressed to hear that the Feds were spying on Eliot Spitzer. No, not because I don't like the man, but because I think maybe we should spy on our politicians, all the time. No probable cause, you say? I fling back at you Mark Twain's observation that America only has one distinct criminal class: Congress. . . . I think it's entirely appropriate that the anti-corruption police watch politicians like hawks. They've chosen public office; that conveys a lot of responsibility to the public, including assuring them that your votes aren't being bought outright. I also think that politicians, when caught in a crime, should automatically get the maximum penalty; if they think the law is such a good idea, they ought to suffer heartily when they disregard it."

We need to expose that those in the U.S. military are trained to be part of a “killing machine.” While not every member of the military is an individual murderer, they are all part of a system that commits war crimes, including aggressive wars, massacres, rape, and other crimes against humanity, all in the service of U.S. imperialism. The bottom line is that even if these people are relatives or friends, you can not support the troops without also supporting the objective role that these troops play in the imperialist system.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

HRC and her puppets are playing the race card, the gender card,the experience card, the fear mongering card, and the "Damn it! I'm Hillary Rodham Clinton, you peasant!" card.

She even has the flat out gall to say that beating her like a rented mule (with my apologies to rented mules for comparing them to HRC) qualifies Obama to be her Vice-President.

She's not going to give up on her dream of inflicting a Socialist Police State on the United States of America while there is still any thin sliver of chance of pulling it off.

If the stupid democrat peasants won't see that she is clearly the superior being and vote for her, she'll have to rely on the DNC Overseers, which they call "Super Delegates." Her plan is that they will anoint her over the so called "will" of the democrat voters.

She can count the the loyal support of the Party appointed Overseers. Like current New York Governor Elliot Spizer.

The tubes are the core of a bioreactor, which is itself the heart of a new tech­nology that Coskata claims can make etha­nol out of wood chips, household garbage, grass, and old tires--indeed, just about any organic material. The bioreactor, Tobey explains, allows the company to combine thermochemical and biological approaches to synthesizing ethanol. Taking advantage of both, he says, makes Coskata's process cheaper and more versatile than either the technologies widely used today to make ethanol from corn or the experimental processes designed to work with sources other than corn.

"This is a huge deal," says Ken Case, CEO of Omni Group, a company that implements ideas from David Allen's Getting Things Done in organizational software for the Mac operating system. "Apple has built this small handheld computer that's based around the same fundamental technology of the Mac. What [the SDK] means for us is that we now have the opportunity to build software that people have been clamoring for since the iPhone was announced."...Businesses will be more likely to dole out iPhones to employees because, in addition to e-mail compatibility and synching ability, Apple is now offering a way for employees to access business servers that are behind firewalls. Moreover, the phones can be cleared of all data remotely, if they are lost or stolen....Nonetheless, says Allen, it's still not a complete free-for-all. It's not clear whether programmers will have access to certain layers of information about the phone, such as those that could allow them to build Bluetooth peripherals like keyboards. Allen says that he hasn't yet had a chance to dive deeply into the SDK, but he's not sure whether it will allow for software that lets iPhone users receive data, such as instant messages, while they're placing calls over the cellular network (something that's not possible now).

Sunday, March 09, 2008

The subprime mortgage collapse is another tale of unintended consequences.

The crisis has its roots in the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, a Carter-era law that purported to prevent "redlining" - denying mortgages to black borrowers - by pressuring banks to make home loans in "low- and moderate-income neighborhoods." Under the act, banks were to be graded on their attentiveness to the "credit needs" of "predominantly minority neighborhoods." The higher a bank's rating, the more likely that regulators would say yes when the bank sought to open a new branch or undertake a merger or acquisition.

But to earn high ratings, banks were forced to make increasingly risky loans to borrowers who wouldn't qualify for a mortgage under normal standards of creditworthiness. The Community Reinvestment Act, made even more stringent during the Clinton administration, trapped lenders in a Catch-22.

"If they comply," wrote Loyola College economist Thomas DiLorenzo, "they know they will have to suffer from more loan defaults. If they don't comply, they face financial penalties . . . which can cost a large corporation like Bank of America billions of dollars."

Banks nationwide thus ended up making more and more subprime loans and agreeing to dangerously lax underwriting standards - no down payment, no verification of income, interest-only payment plans, weak credit history. If they tried to compensate for the higher risks they were taking by charging higher interest rates, they were accused of unfairly steering borrowers into "predatory" loans they couldn't afford.

How many reporters/broadcasters remember being lied to by the Clinton White House?

Example: During MonicaGate it was common for Sydney Blumenthal or some White House associate to leak a story. Then, after the story appeared, the White House would go into full apoplexy blaming the prosecutor or their "enemies" for leaking.

We know that happened. Which means there were reporters who KNEW they were being used and KNEW they were being lied to when the WH denied it. But, best I can recall, none had the courage to disclose the deceit. They allowed themselves to be used.

After such dirty dealings, I wouldn't be surprised that the Washington press corps would have buyer's remorse on the Second Coming of the Clintons.

Maybe I'm completely off base, but I have no doubt the press knows enough to prevent them from relishing a second Clinton presidency.

"Rules can be broken as long as Democrats are victorious.Thats the Democrat Party in a nutshell."

There is massive whining from democrats about Florida and Michigan. This is really simple. The rules were set, the state democrat parties knew the rules, and they broken them anyway. Every democrat in the Florida state legislative branch voted for the change. Now they want to change rules after the fact in order to illegally tip the balance of pledged delegates.

# Dividend taxes will double from the current capital gains tax rate to the individual income rate.

# The estate tax will go from zero in 2010 to 55 percent in 2011, and the exemption rate will drop to $1 million (which is less than it is today).

That’s a big list that impacts just about every American in the country.

So ask yourselves which you’d rather see happen: More of your hard-earned money taken from your wallet so that these politicians don’t have to clamp down on wasteful spending? Or more of your money staying in your wallet and politicians finally facing hard realities about government spending?

I would hope that there are enough responsible adults left in the democrat party to figure out that they don't want Skippy the Soviet Young Pioneer given the keys to the country.

So, HRC is the lesser of two evils, but remember that even "journalists" from the left leaning NY Times admit that there really isn't much difference between their two platforms. Hillary is a wee bit less liberal than Obama, but that is like saying that Pol Pot was just a wee bit less of mass murderer of his own citizens than Stalin.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Let's be real here, unless Barak"The return of Jimmy Carter"Obama wins Ohio and Texas by large double digit margins, Hillary RodhamClinton isn't going anywhere.She's worked hard to get this close to the Oval Office. She isn't going to give up her dream as long as there is a chance, any chance, she can reach her goal of establishing hard left extremist Socialism in the United States.

If it requires a bloody, knock down drag out fight at the convention, then that is what she will do. As NPR's Mara Liasson said, "The Clintons always use two sets of brass knuckles when one will do." What else is she going to do? Go back to being the carpet bagger, so-called "Senator from New York"? A position which was, and let us be honest here, just a stepping stone to the Presidency. If she does lose, she may finish out her term, and then follow her co-conspirator "husband" footsteps into the big money of speaking engagements where foreigners pay them big money to have a Clinton tell them how bad America is.

But I don't think she is going to give up that easy. If she wins Ohio and/or Texas, even by slim margins, she will proclaim herself the new "Comeback Kid" and use that as an excuse to keep herself in the running.

Which would be cool. Having her and Obama snipe at each other, in a nasty vicious downward spiral of the trademark Clinton "Politics of Personal Destruction" straight into the convention would be first rate political theater.

It's already been proven over and over that HRC is an agent of Satan and is a Marxist in a Pantsuit. The sad part is that she is actually more conservative than Barak Obama, who is consistently rated as one of the most liberal members of the Senate.Kids too young to remember the double digit inflation and unemployment of the Carter years (and those in "progressive" denial) don't recognize his "message of change" as the same warmed over bullshit that Carter slung and dragged the country down with.By way of Curt at Flopping Aces is this Victor Davis Hanson article that spells out the horrid details of the damage that Barak Obama will inflict on this country.

At home, there will be an increase in taxes—income, estate, payroll—to fund more government health care, education, and general entitlement programs. The old Reaganesque notion that government subsidies can make one more dependent, angrier, and envious is forgotten, along with the notion that lower taxes stimulate economic growth and encourage risk-taking, innovation, and independence. I worry especially about the lifting of income caps (how far?) on social security taxes inasmuch as they were part of the original covenant justifying the caps on benefits paid out.

NAFTA and other free trade agreements would be repealed; illegal immigration would either not be an issue, or more a problem of finding the right way, with borders still open, to grant amnesties. Appointments would hinge on a belief in bigger government and the theme that the individual is currently suffering due to reactionaries in government and corporations, barely housed, fed, or educated, and deserves more federal dollars appropriated from others who either don’t need all their income or didn’t deserve the compensation they were given.

Abroad, there is a general argument that things are going terribly. Forget that the Taliban and Saddam are gone. Forget that we have not suffered another 9/11 attack. Forget that there is far more democratic promise in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Lebanon than was true in 2001. Forget that the Merkel and Sarkozy governments, along with Eastern European leaders, are more pro-American than their predecessors in 2001.

Instead, we are disliked by everyone, and for good reasons. The fact that Iranian mullahs, the House of Saud cousins, Hugo Chavez’s communists, European mullahs, and the Arab street don’t approve of America says more about us than it does them. The solution is to follow more the dictates of European Union and United Nations, where sophisticated internationalists can guide us through the maze of global power, instructing mostly ignorant Americans how and why we tend to cause so many of the world’s problems. Misunderstanding and our own obtuseness explain global tension, not the agendas of enemies who know exactly what they want and how to get it.

Our military is not so much an offensive force, designed to defeat and kill our enemies, that needs support and constant honing; better to see it as a large social organization that we must look at in terms only of proper rotations, health care, and benefits. We are to support the troops not in the sense of doing everything we can to ensure they win, and gain the proper recognition for their courage and sacrifice, but rather in consideration of their victimhood, offering proper sympathy and remediation for the defeat in Iraq, the unwise use of their skills, and the needless loss of their lives.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Gregory Smith said Jar Allah, also known as Abu Yasir al-Saudi, and another Saudi known only as Hamdan, were both killed Wednesday in Mosul.

Al-Saudi was the man who headed up the al-Qaida network in southeast Mosul, an insurgent hotbed where U.S. forces wage daily battles against the group.

"Mosul is the center of al-Qaida's terrorist activities today. Mosul is a critical crossroads for al-Qaida in Iraq. Baghdad has always been al-Qaida's operational center of gravity, but Mosul remains their strategic center of gravity as it provides access to the flow of foreign fighters," Smith said.

…"It is their strategic center of gravity. One-half to two-thirds of attacks in Iraq today are in and around Mosul," Smith said.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Hillary RodhamClinton has been blowing her horn about all her "experience."Which, in fairness, is greater than Barak Obama's, but then that is a pretty damn low bar to measure yourself against. Let's be honest, a few years ago, this guy was a state Senator in a fly over state.

The depth, or more accurately, the lack there of, of HRC's so called "experience" was brought to light by an embarrassingly simple question.

Canadian Television has a bombshell story on the hypocrisy and double-dealing of Barack Obama; apparently a senior member of his staff told Canadian officials that Obama’s promise to repeal NAFTA was just “campaign rhetoric,” and should not be taken seriously. Here’s a video clip:

Angelina Jolie is in danger of being blacklisted for not following the liberal GroupThink on Iraq. From the WSJ's Best of the Web Today:

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.

Today's humanitarian crisis in Iraq--and the potential consequences for our national security--are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East, won't explode in violent desperation, sending the whole region into further disorder? . . .

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do.

Mr. Taranto sums it up well:

It's quite a contrast with the attitude of Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama, who said last summer that even preventing genocide was not a sufficient reason for a continuing presence in Iraq. What does it say about the Democratic Party that it seems poised to nominate someone who, on the most pressing concern of the day, is less morally serious than a Hollywood starlet?

Personally, I'd rank Ms. Jolie as an actual "Hollywood star" rather than just a "starlet", but then I actually liked Tomb Raider. I even bought a copy to include to care packages a local high school was collecting to send to US Military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.